April 10, 2009

Ok, just added to yesterday's log for about 30 min. Turned in to essay about the state of medicine. Posted the 18 Patient Blues.

Cogitating how to Handle Future Ex-Partners for now. ACOA head down pleasant stone face and counter all questions with, "Sorry, I'm distracted about a patient." or "Oh, excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom." Bummer, they aren't going to get to hear our demo CD because they have forfeited rights to any personal information at the present time. If they ask for meeting will say willing to meet in a month, at 4:40, not at lunch, and you'll have to get the COO's permission because that is Highly Irregular. So I'm letting Red Paw have a go.

I am a little bummed though. I was feeling so solidly comfortable being myself at work. Nope, turns out not welcome and too scarey. Oh, well. I'm still comfortable at work, with the nurses, the front desk people, the patients and at 6 am when there is no one to bother me.

Don't really feel like working on those charts this am. Think I'll go home. So there.

Suvived clinic. Zebra today was very complex obstetric patient whose 20 min visit took 50 min. I like my patients. Had fun dressing for clinic. Wore new dress, a creamy yellow orange hemp that the label said was "goddess style". I am thinking more hand-maiden, honestly. Not wise to incarnate a god or goddess. Gathers at shoulders. I did careful but quick make up to slightly exagerate fatigued eyes and then put a little more purple and a bit more highlight on the bags under my eyes. Refused to talk to my future ex-partners at all except for two clinical problems. Polite, just said I didn't want to talk today. Nurses and front dest peoples (all female, like me) were all wearing Easter hats or made-on-the-spot Easter rabbit ear paper headdresses. I put on my devil horns that I'd brought, but they agreed might be a bit much for patients. They made me bunny ears and I wore them all day in clinic. Went to to Unitarian Good Friday Service. Very intense about grief. Appropos stuff for me right now. Ran around then got mail, talked to boat guys and gave them the earnest money and signed contract and then went back to work. Kinda didn't eat again. Well, will have big dinner. The pushing to see more people and continuously working in clinic flat out as fast as I can makes me tense and not want to eat. I've NEVER been anorexic though in residency I used to sleep if choice was food or sleep. Goal for weekend: would like to get ALL the charts caught up which means realistically I can plow through 1/3. Oh, well. So it goes.

On Friday we elected to stay in during the morning, in order to wait for Dimview's granddaughter and Everything2's most devoted noder, Fniggles, to arrive, escorted by her parents. Fniggles is just over one year old and thanks to Dimview's birthday gift of a user account she has been a noder her entire life, although she is probably not quite old to comprehend this yet, let alone the tremendous responsibilities and powers that have been bestowed upon her by her noble noding ancestor. Exactly what Fniggles will think when she grows up enough to understand E2 is entirely beyond me. It feels like some kind of vast heroic epic in the making. One day, when she turns eighteen, her parents will take her aside and explain, "There's something we haven't told you..." And how will she react? Horror? Embarrassment? Indifference? Or, in the space year 2026, will she resurrect the surely-dead website of Everything2 and lead it to our eternally promised but never delivered mastery of the universe and all information within?

Children who have been special/different/"chosen" since birth are commonplace in fiction, but it's not every day that one gets to watch a new one emerge in reality. It's like we were present at her secret origin or something.

Fniggles has been taught not to touch computers, which is probably wise, so, despite the encouragement of our scary room full of complete strangers, she was reluctant to get up in front of Dimview's laptop and start bashing keys. Eventually, however, she was coaxed into noding for the first time, and Dimview will probably put it online in her behalf some time soon. Belatedly, I have realised that perhaps giving her a keyboard and not showing her that it was connected to a screen might have been more effective.

We headed for the central station of Copenhagen, bringing with us two more members of the Danish noder contingent, soren15 and liveforever, and met up with perennial favourites la petite mort and StrawberryFrog, who had already spent the night in Copenhagen but were staying at a separate hotel away from the Noder Labyrinth. We headed for a pub not far from the front entrance of Tivoli for beer, and it was here that the one reason why I can never move to Denmark reared its ugly head: the booze is mind-bogglingly, cripplingly expensive. BaronWR handed me a 50-kroner note, offering to buy a drink for both of us. When I returned, I was sad to announce that not only had I no change to give him, I had had to inject 50 kroners of my own to cover our round. Do the mathematics. That's about £6.75 for half a litre (i.e. less than a pint) of beer, which is more than twice as expensive as London, and the beer assuredly isn't anywhere near twice as delicious.

Liveforever, a history lecturer, then led us on a touristy kind of tour through the Latin quarter of Copenhagen, dispensing sage advice about the various historical landmarks as we passed them... advice which I, a scientist, have sadly since allowed to fall entirely out of my brain. We worked our way past Tycho Brahe's tower (more later) and knobbly leafless trees (even Danish trees are stylish), working our way towards Klaptræet, a traditional destination of the Copenhagenoders, where we enjoyed beer that was even more expensive still. Our final Copenhagenoder, andersa, met up with us. La petite mort and BaronWR, who have much better cameras than me, photographed us using their various magical complicated lens structures, such as the cool bending tripod-like "Lensbaby" device, which allows you to e.g. take a photo of a row of fence posts with all of them in focus. It transpired that their cameras were basically identical except for branding and very minor alterations in shape.

Desiring further, cheaper booze, we left Klaptræet and passed other interesting landmarks and a shop selling ludicrously expensive custom bikes and eventually wound up nowhere because all the pubs and bars we investigated were either too expensive or too full. Finally, we admitted defeat and retired to the Labyrinth, where, with a full complement of noders achieved, we attempted to create a second, grander and much more complicated panorama which, at the time of writing... has not yet been successfully stitched together from its components. Bah!